Physics beats marketing everytime. The way Dyson has designed the "tank track", they are little more than belt driven wheels, except the belt is exposed. His goal is to raise the start point enough on the leading side to be able to mimic a larger diameter wheel. Also by placing the pivot up front it gains the same suspension advantage that the Roomba has over all other square front robots (also why the put brush in the back, to allow this suspension choice)

The problem is the center point of the front wheel is still not that high, and the ground clearance is extremely low. They tried to solve by adding a ton of tiny casters. But they really are tiny, and the front pivot caser is going to have a lot of trouble with hair.

Also the tracks are worse than a large wheel when backing up or turning in place. And suspension is inferior to iii▪️

No remote -- Dyson has no remote like the Powerbot or others. I find the remote handy even aside from manual driving, and it has more buttons than on the Powerbot panel, similar to TV's and such. It takes time to bring up apps on smartphones and they have to be to hand etc. Switching between Quiet and regular power can be done on the remote for example. Even better than wands, where you have to mutter some spell or other. You can see the buttons on the remote easier than crowded control panels on the floor.

I recommend new products come with a remote even if "sold separately -- batteries not included".Notice one Youtube complaint about Dyson was difficulty getting the app working, poor customer service etc., and all these WiFi bots have reports of connection and setup difficulties. No problem with a remote. Works when your router is down, too. Don't forget those WiFi dead spots in large houses, either (new expensive repeater systems are handling that.)By all means offer WiFi for the crowd who loves it. Save the expense for those not so under that spell. Avoid getting those customer complaints on Youtube.

On remotes again: in using integrated remote receiver components, the size of power transistors, for an optical boundary system added to Neato's, I found a single domed sensor facing upwards is adequate, if mounted on top of a robot, maybe next to the guidance camera. Powerbots have two because used to triangulate a beacon in the dock, and also used with an IR boundary emitter (though they have now switched to mag strips). Dyson appears to locate its dock through camera recognition, requiring a big billboard pattern.

I think for regular daily interactions a robot should just need a single button push to start or stop. For more complex but less regular interactions like scheduling or setup then an app offers richer functionality than a remote, without having another piece of battery powered plastic in the house.

I've had a Dyson 360 Eye for a week or so now, and it's working very well for my small 2-up, 2-down terrace house. I can leave the doors open upstairs, put the robot at the top of the stairs and set it running, and it will clean both rooms and return to its start position. Minimal preparation (e.g. moving clothes & shoes off the floor) helps prevent it getting stuck, but it's pretty reliable, trundling around like a large and single-minded beetle.

Downstairs, a bit more preparation is need; it can get stuck on rug tassels and low platforms (lamp stands, etc). Often it can manoeuvre its way off again, but not always.

Now that the new software provides a quiet mode that seems almost as effective at half the volume, I can't really fault it.

It does have a couple of idiosyncrasies - it doesn't seem to see black furniture, so always bumps it, and It's reluctant to enter gaps only a little wider than it is, although it can turn on its own axis and reverse out if necessary. I once also had it just pause until I moved it when it had difficulty navigating out of a cramped space.

I'm going to keep it - it's fun, and it's much better than I expected with cat hair, and picks up a surprising amount of fine fluff and dust even after a conventional vacuuming (with a Dyson V60).

The reason the 360 will not go down gaps that are only slightly larger than the Robot is because of how the cleaning head sticks out the sides. When it attempts to turn in place the circle it makes is larger than the robot. It would get stuck if travels down a path that's a robot width.

So why don't they just back out without turning? They can be seen backing up in all sorts of ways, only never where it counts. What is this preoccupation with forward motion? If another robot fails to do this I am almost of a mind to program it to picket outside the factory.

A few reasons. Most robots have only a front Bumper, so they use current sensing to detect a rear impact but often unreliable.

The 360's vision system also lacks the ability to see below its own body. So they added IR sensing along the front, but again nothing to the lastly the tracks only work well going forward but are heavily impaired going backwards and the cleaning system only works in forward direction as well.

Of course iii▪️ has full body bumper, Omni directional cleaning and never has to turn around...

glnc222 wrote:So why don't they just back out without turning? They can be seen backing up in all sorts of ways, only never where it counts. What is this preoccupation with forward motion? If another robot fails to do this I am almost of a mind to program it to picket outside the factory.

Look at it this way... the 360 is a lot smaller in diameter than either a Roomba or Neato, so it's still going to clean much narrower gaps and spaces.

third_deg wrote:Of course iii▪️ has full body bumper, Omni directional cleaning and never has to turn around...

Well, you've promised we'll see this sometime during 2016, so you've only got 4 months to now finish and launch this long-awaited project!

What I'd like to see from makers is video demonstration of solving the problems which have been observed with the robots, such as over-head pinches, traps on lamp bases, cantilever chairs, and pedestal bar stools, entering tight spaces they get lost in, climbing thresholds etc. Problem carpets and transitions to carpet. The Powerbot avoids overheads and since fixed, works pretty well at least for my needs.Area coverage should be specified instead of just run time, some average of test environments (I have seen some of this recently, forget where).

Enough with the pretty illustrations of hardware features and demos on trivial spaces. Save me the trouble of having to test it (though it has been fun; all good things come to an end...). Show effectiveness on carpets as they actually have to be cleaned, not cereal sprinkles. And enough with the comparisons to fifteen year old Roomba models no longer relevant competition.

Also specify cost of replacing the battery and expected battery life, as these things push the envelope on battery use in ways unlike most uses. Show the true cost of using it.There are trade-offs in robot design and costs. Identify where positioned. Cleaning large spaces is bound to be higher cost.

The most interesting feature I have seen listed only on some otherwise useless models is automatic detection of carpets to increase power only where needed. Not much use without any actually sufficient power for carpet.The Neato at least, exhibits significant drag on carpets which might be usable data, not sure how this feature has been implemented. Maybe how the bots sink into the carpet.

The dumber the robot, the less chance it has of getting stuck. My 10+ year old Roomba Reds almost never get stuck. Since they are not super aware of their surroundings they just keep going. I remember one was caught under a small stand for 10 minutes. It kept turning, going forward, and repeating until it got out. My Mint gave up in the same situation.

Roomba's could get stuck pinched overhead. An after-market stick on top probe to engage the bumper was sold, maybe still is. A wire loop mod can do the same for Neato's.

The guided robots seem to revert to random in tight spaces like the 10 minutes diversion mentioned. Since the Dyson keeps a record of its motion, even displayed on the smartphone, you would think guidance could be smarter.

The random pattern bots seem to be artifacts of high sensor and processor cost at the time so long ago. It was surprising the original guided Neato, now ten years old, came at lower prices than Roomba's and still does. Now even Roomba's latest model is guided -- still at higher prices.

sportcentermaniac wrote: the run time is terrible if you have majority carpeted areas. it cant find its way back to the base half the time

Dyson came out with a firmware patch that added a new choice to slow down the vacuum motor speed and double the amount of battery run time. I had to go to their website and download the firmware patch since the WiFi function in the Dyson 360 would not download the patch automatically. There were two other patches for removing and installing the WiFi function but were not available for download.